Physics during WWII and beyond

The war brought about big changes in the Physics Department, as it became
involved in a research program on radar which remained secret until after
the end of the war. Many of the following details are gleaned from papers
and documents left by Dr. Dearle (Dearle, 1948).

On 1 December 1939, Dr. Dearle, along with representatives of Toronto, Queens,
McGill and McMaster, went to Ottawa for a meeting called by Dr. R.W. Boyle,
Director of the National Research Council's Division of Physics and Electrical
Engineering. It was a peculiar meeting, since Dr. Boyle had been sworn to
secrecy about radar, and could only "talk around" the subject, saying nothing
about the exact nature of the development nor just what it was he was seeking
from these university representatives.

Nevertheless, this was enough to set things in motion, and very shortly
the London Association for War Research was established, which included
a number of prominent London citizens, in addition to members of research
teams in medicine and physics. Early in 1940 the Association sent a memorandum
to NRC, offering to develop "a portable device which can be used to automatically
establish the co-ordinates of a distant object", which would require "sensitive
receiving equipment for detecting the reflected energy" from high frequency
waves. Unaware of its discovery, Western was offering to invent radar! In
its startled reply, NRC suggested that "It would be wise to make modifications
in your application, as the outline of the proposed research is really a
brief statement of a project on which a very large proportion of the research
facilities of Great Britain, Canada and the U.S. are and have been working
for some years."

The Department moved very quickly, and by January 1940 it had added fourth-year
courses in "Radio" and "Vacuum Tube Theory and Practice" so that it could
turn out students who could enter the radar services quickly. By the next
summer five students had already gone overseas, and the Department was running
the first of several training programs for radio technicians, taken by about
400 servicemen over the next few years.

By November, 1940, Western was selected by NRC as one of three or four Canadian
universities to join in an intensive radar research program. Under the direction
of Dr. Dearle, and with the enthusiasm and skill of Gar Woonton, who was
sent to the United States for special training, the Department converted
itself into a laboratory to study the radiation and detection of centimetre
wavelength waves. At first the Western research was focused on antenna radiation
patterns. That winter the tests on antenna patterns were carried out first
by dragging equipment on a sled (borrowed from one of the professor's children)
around the University campus, and then the transmissions from the Science
Building were monitored in a cold, unheated, green shed, via a variety of
antennas mounted on its roof. Later the research turned to the investigation
of crystal diodes as detectors of UHF waves (Woonton, 1978).

Manpower was in very short supply when, in 1940, a gray-haired woman walked
into the Department, asking if she could be of some help. This was the Department's
introduction to Elizabeth Laird (Toronto, BA, 1896; Bryn
Mawr, PhD, 1901), one of the most remarkable individuals in the Department's
history to date. Dr. Laird was born in Owen Sound in 1874, and lived at
various places throughout Ontario where her father, a Methodist minister,
had charges. She completed secondary school at the London Collegiate Institute,
and then attended the University of Toronto where she graduated in 1896
with the Gold Medal in Mathematics and Physics. Following her PhD from Bryn
Mawr in 1901 she joined the staff of the Physics Department at Mount Holyoke
College, and two years later was named Professor and Head of the department,
a position she held until her "retirement" to London in 1940. Her offer
of help was quickly accepted, and she became an active member of the radar
research team, working without remuneration (and taking her turn making
measurements in the unheated 'green shed'). In 1945 her position in the
Department was formally recognized with an appointment as Honorary Professor.
She continued an active research program, including the supervision of several
MSc students on the biological effects of microwave radiation, until her
second retirement in 1953 at the age of 78. Dr. Laird continued to actively
participate in departmental colloquia and other scientific meetings until
shortly before her death in 1969 at the age of 94. She was recognized with
an honorary DSc by the University of Toronto in 1927, and by an LLD from
Western in 1954. In 1970 the Physics Department recognized this remarkable
woman with the establishment of the annual Elizabeth Laird Memorial Lecture.

The end of the war brought a flood of veterans to the university, more than
doubling the university enrolments between 1944-45 and 1946-47. In 1947,
Gar Woonton and Dr. Dearle set up a new Radio Physics option for 3rd
and 4th year students in the Mathematics and Physics Program.
This was a most successful innovation, attracting large numbers of war veterans
whose contact with radio and radar during the war gave them an interest
in this new field. The program attracted many excellent students during
the time it was offered (it last appeared in the 1963-64 calendar).

The end of the war also brought changes in graduate studies in the University
and the Department. Not only did numbers increase, but new degrees and a
new Faculty of Graduate Studies arose starting in 1947, largely at the behest
of the new President, Dr. George Edward Hall. In 1947 the Physics Department
graduated eight students with the new degree of Master of Science, in place
of the previous MA degree. Plans were also initiated to establish PhD programs
in the university, and by 1954 the Physics Department graduated its first
PhDs.

At the start of 1945 there were still only five faculty members in the Department,
with an average age of just under 50 (not counting Elizabeth Laird), and
after the intensive work of the previous five years it must also have been
a rather tired faculty. Starting in 1945, the Department began hiring new
teaching staff. Of course, these were in short supply, so many people were
hired as Instructors with only bachelor or master degrees, often teaching
full loads while working on MSc or PhD degrees. Over a period of five years
from 1945 to 1949 the staff doubled from 5 to 10; new arrivals included
E. Harold Tull [1945-1966] (Western, MSc, 1945); John
H. Blackwell [1947-1962] (Western, MSc, 1947, PhD, 1952); Ralph
W. Nicholls [1948-1965] (Imperial College, PhD, 1951), Eric
Brannen [1949-1987] (McGill, PhD, 1948), and Peter J. Sandiford
[1946-1951] (Toronto, PhD, 1952). Very well liked by the students, Peter
Sandiford was at Western all too briefly. He left in 1951 to work in the
research division of the Ontario Hydro Commission, and eventually went on
to become Professor of Transportation in the McGill Business School, where
the computer laboratory has been named in his memory (Nicholls, 1999).

Some of the graduates from this period went on to prominent careers in science.
I remember R.L. Allen telling me that he sometimes asked the students in
the class to suggest questions for the final exam in the 4th
year course in electricity and magnetism which he taught (I think some of
their mark was based on the quality of the questions). This led to difficulties
for R.L. in 1946 when one of the students provided questions which were
too difficult for the instructor, let alone the others in the class. The
student's name was J. David Jackson (MIT, PhD, 1949; now
emeritus professor of Physics, University of California, Berkeley), who
went on to a very distinguished career, and, amongst graduate students,
notoriety, as the author of Classical Electrodynamics, which has
provided problems to confound several generations of graduate students (and
the occasional instructor!). Western recognized Dr. Jackson with an Honorary
D.Sc. in 1989. Recently Dr. Jackson has very generously endowed a graduate
scholarship in the Department in memory of his parents, as well as two undergraduate
science scholarships, named in honour of R.L. Allen and Gar Woonton.

Dr. Jackson won a gold medal in physics in 1946. That year a second gold
medal winner was Donald M. Hunten (McGill, PhD, 1950),
who graduated in the Chemistry and Physics program. He is now Regents Professor,
Department of Planetary Sciences, University of Arizona, and an international
authority on planetary atmospheres.

In 1948 John H. Chapman (McGill, PhD, 1951; 1921-1979)
graduated with a B.Sc. from Western (a member of the first class to graduate
in the Radio Physics option), and went on to an illustrious career in Ottawa,
and has often been referred to as "the father of the Canadian space program."
In particular, from 1958-71, Dr. Chapman played a key role in initiating
and directing the hugely successful Alouette/ISIS scientific earth satellite
program, and was assistant deputy minister for the Canadian space program
in the 1970s. Innes K. MacKenzie (UBC, PhD, 1953) was another
1948 Radio Physics graduate (also MSc, 1949, Western). He went on to become
the first Chairman of Physics at the University of Guelph (i.e., when it
became a university).

In 1949 two gold medals were awarded. One, for Mathematics and Physics,
was won by Parker Alford (Princeton, PhD, 1954), who returned
to Western later as Department Chairman (see below). The other, for Radio
Physics, was won by George Harrower (McGill, PhD, 1952),
who went on to a career in radio astronomy at Queen's University. He served
as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science (64-69) and then as Academic
Vice-Principal (69-76) at Queens before going to Lakehead University to
serve as President from 1976 until 1984.

Space on campus was also in short supply after the war, and the University
initiated a building program and a fund-raising campaign in late 1945. By
April 1947, over $2.5 million had been raised, and almost immediately the
Natural Science Building was extended with the addition of a two-storey
plus basement addition across the north ends of the existing wings, providing
badly needed laboratory space for Chemistry, Physics and Zoology (Talman
and Talman, pp.181-182).

By 1949 Dr. Dearle had been Head of the Department for 30 very important
years in the history of the Department, overseeing its development from
a department with a single professor to a growing department with a promising
future in graduate studies and research. He had led the department's war-time
research program, for which he was honoured with an M.B.E. ("Member of the
Most Excellent Order of the British Empire"); in 1944 he was elected a Fellow
of the Royal Society of Canada. Dr. Dearle decided that it was time to pass
the leadership of the Department on to a younger physicist, while he would
remain on staff as a Research Professor. He remained with the Department
until his retirement in 1958. In 1960 the Physics Department honoured him
by renaming the Physics Gold Medal the "Raymond Compton Dearle Gold Medal
in Physics." The University recognized him with an honorary LLD in 1963;
he died in 1970 at the age of 80.